The Girl With the Crimson Blade
by Artemis1000
Summary: Knight of Ren-in-training Rey spared Finn's life, but Snoke remains determined to see the young Senator of Onderon dead. With danger now looming over both of them, Finn will have to decide how far he can trust his enemy - or his own judgement, when this enemy makes his heart beat faster. And Rey? She'll have to face that second chances can be wrong choices.


**Summary** : Knight of Ren-in-training Rey spared Finn's life, but Snoke remains determined to see the young Senator of Onderon dead. With danger now looming over both of them, Finn will have to decide how far he can trust his enemy - or his own judgement, when this enemy makes his heart beat faster. And Rey? She'll have to face that second chances can be wrong choices. It might take a third to get it right.

 **Notes** : Here it is _finally_ , the long-promised sequel to "From Jakku With Love." I'm sorry it took me so long to get this story going! I've known the basic plot all along, but my dread of writing action/adventure was my biggest roadblock.

I don't want this story to become too big, but it's certainly going to have a larger scope than "From Jakku." I think the biggest challenge will be to show that choosing Finn is a far greater sacrifice for Rey than it might look for us with our shipper goggles. (I should really write the prequel exploring how she ended up with the Knights.) It's no fun if the choice is easy, and Finn doesn't have to fight for her!

Buckle up, and I hope you enjoy this ride!

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 **The Girl With the Crimson Blade**

 **Chapter 1**

"Hey, Slip, have you seen the…? Oh." Finn blinked as he stepped back into his study, which was indeed still lit, to find not his best friend in the room but his very own Knight of Ren. She looked just like when she'd broken in last week, swathed in black robes with a solemn face, but her cowl was already down this time and she wore no helmet.

Finn smiled awkwardly. He'd spent so many hours figuring out what he would say when he saw her again, but it was all gone now. "Hi," he squawked.

Rey frowned at him. "Your security is useless."

"Um…"

Rey's eyes narrowed in displeasure. "You speak more sense when you are sleepy. Do you want me to come back tonight?"

The _both!_ was already on Finn's lips, but he somehow managed to stifle it. All that political training was finally good for something. He scratched the back of his head and looked towards the door. "Um, no, it's not that, it's just…" He shrugged, and let his eyes return to the young woman. She had propped up her elbows on his desk and was watching him with feline intensity. Finn felt distinctly judged under her hazel gaze. "I didn't expect you to show up here."

Rey nodded. "I knew I should have seen you in bed instead."

Um. That was not what Finn had meant. He stayed silent anyway, effectively robbed of all his normal senatorial coherency.

He silently sat down across from her, and was glad he had invested in comfortable chairs for his guests.

Running might still be the safe and sane response to a First Order intruder, but for the life of him he couldn't see her as a threat anymore. She had come to kill him on Supreme Leader Snoke's orders, and spared his life instead. If Finn's heart kept racing, it certainly wasn't from fear.

This was the first time he got a good look at Rey, Finn realized as he studied her face. It had been dark when she broke into his bedroom. In proper light, she was even prettier than he had realized, but there was a hardness to her face which spoke either of a hard life or just came with the territory of being a Dark Side adept, he couldn't be sure of that. He would have thought her to be pale, what with Knights of Ren never being seen without a helmet, but Rey's freckled face was tanned.

And now she was scowling. "Are you done looking at me?"

"Yes?"

This had to be even more bizarre than their first encounter. It hadn't been the only one, though. Finn straightened. "I saw you, sometimes, watching me. Well, I saw something black out of the corner of my eyes," he amended, "and I figured that had to be you."

"It was. I told you there are other assassins after you."

He slumped. Right. If that wasn't a sobering thought.

Rey had told him his life was in danger, and his security had been upped after she broke in, but Finn had tried to live and work as normally as possible. He had Onderon's acceptance into the New Republic to negotiate, he couldn't let the First Order cow him into hiding in his senatorial apartments.

Rey stood up, she kept her movements slow enough that they wouldn't come across as threatening. Somehow Finn wasn't surprised to learn she was prone to pacing, nor that there was something distinctly predatory about her gait. Her eyes never left him while she paced the length of the room.

"You should leave Ryloth," she told him in that clipped no-nonsense voice of hers. "I can't protect you forever. If you stay you are going to die."

He squared his shoulders, not quite bristling, but bracing himself for an argument. He'd had plenty of them already. "My security told me the same thing. But I can't leave." He waited till he caught Rey's gaze, he needed her to see and understand how serious he was, that this wasn't reckless heroics.

"Onderon's counting on me," he explained, "all these people who took up arms against the Stormtroopers and chased them off our planet were in danger, too, but it didn't stop them. It's just a matter of days or weeks till the First Order sends a fleet to bomb our planet into molten slag." He frowned. "If they weren't busy with the war our uprising wouldn't have lasted a day."

Finn stood up, his own steps towards Rey as slow and measured as her movements had been. He didn't want to spook her, but she looked spooked enough by his words already. "It's not that I'm not grateful for all you're risking for me. I am. I know I can't even imagine how huge this is for you. But I can't leave Ryloth till we have been welcomed into the New Republic. Its fleets are the only thing that can prevent a genocide."

Rey's face was taut, her lips pinched and pale. She looked nearly physically pained, and so very haunted.

It had been a long, long time since Finn had last felt so rotten. He had no right to ask of her what he kept asking. He didn't know how the Knights of Ren punished their own, but he knew he wouldn't like the answer.

And he still didn't understand why she had chosen to spare him. Because he was different than she had expected, sure, but she was risking the Supreme Leader's wrath for him. Nobody would do that lightly.

"I'm glad they sent you." Finn reached out to take her gloved hand. Her grip was firm. She didn't hesitate. "And not just because you spared me, but because," he looked up from their hands to look into her eyes again, "because I got to meet you. And I'm really, really glad I got to meet you."

Rey's breath hitched. She looked more frightened than Finn would have thought her capable of. She was so strong and fearsome, but she looked terrified now. Somehow, she still managed to look determined all the same. "I'm glad, too," she admitted. "Nobody's ever come back for me. And then there was Kylo…" Her forehead creased, and she gripped Finn's hand so tightly that it hurt. "But I don't want you to die."

"Are you going to be in big trouble for failing?" Finn asked, though he knew the answer already. Somehow he still hoped the answer would be no.

Rey shook her head, and said, "I'll be fine," but they both knew it was nothing but empty words.

"You don't have to go back, you know," Finn said, his voice becoming louder and animated as hope grew within him again, "you don't have to stay with them, you're nothing like…"

"I'm _exactly_ like them!" Rey spat, and yanked her hand out of his grip. Her eyes had turned cold again. "I'm a Knight of Ren. I've chosen the Dark Side. You have no idea what I'm capable of!"

 _But neither do you_ , Finn thought. He wisely kept silent. Rey was so tense she was trembling, and looked just a hair breadth's away from lashing out. He still remembered the eerie gleam of her red lightsaber staff, and how close he had come to losing his head to it.

"I know. I know you're dangerous. But I think you're a good person." Finn gave her a hesitant little smile. He ached to take her hand again, but if she refused it would hurt too much. "You could have hurt or killed my guards when you last broke in, but you didn't. All you've done is protect me, and you asked for nothing in return. I don't care what else you are, but you aren't evil."

Rey averted her eyes and remained silent for long moments in which Finn heard nothing but the thudding of his own heartbeat. "I'm just Kylo's student. I can't protect you against a proper Knight. And he won't let you go."

She was right, of course. Snoke wouldn't stop. That was how the First Order worked. They never stopped, never showed mercy, never relented.

Finn nodded. "And if the Knights of Ren are hunting you, there's no place in the galaxy that's safe."

If they had met under different circumstances Finn would have liked to ask her for a date, or for her to stay and tell him a little bit more about herself at least. He knew nothing about the girl who risked her life for him. But he didn't know what he could ask for, with things as they were. He was already asking far too much of her.

"Maybe Onderon will become a Republic world before another Knight arrives," Finn said, though he had little hope for that. There were powerful people in the Senate working to roadblock them, and these days it seemed like two new obstacles appeared for every one which he cleared. It was obvious they were buying time for a more _final_ solution.

Rey nodded. "Maybe."

Much to Finn's surprise, it was Rey who suddenly wrapped him into her arms and squeezed with a strength he wouldn't have thought her deceptively lithe frame capable of. For a moment Finn was simply stunned before he remembered to move, and hugged her back. She buried her face against his neck. He could have sworn that she smelled of sand and heat.

"Don't die," Rey whispered.

He ran his fingers over the three messy buns at the back of her head and held her tight.

Don't die. It was the only thought they could cling to, while doom came ever closer for both of them.

Although Rey still seemed in denial, Finn didn't know if there was a way back for her now, or if there ever had been after she failed to kill him the very first time. But he could feel that their fates were intertwined now.

He knew he didn't want her to leave.

As if she had heard his thoughts, Rey slipped out of his embrace. She pulled her cowl up. It shadowed her eyes, but she didn't look ominous to Finn anymore. The blur of whirling black robes at the corner of his eyes had become a comfort over the course of the last week.

She slipped out of his study, and Finn didn't try to stop her. He wouldn't have known what to say.

Don't die, he told himself. The only way to save his life, and hers, was to win the race against time in the Senate.

.

Far away from Ryloth, Kylo Ren bowed low to the Supreme Leader's hologram. The helmet tucked underneath his arm, there was nothing to hide that his face had been schooled into a far too neutral mask to be believable. "Yes, Master. It will be done."

"See that you don't fail me as your student has, or you will share her fate."

 _To be continued…_


End file.
